Horror Campaign - keeping players from flying away

[Deadasadoor]

So I'm starting off a horror one-shot based off of a Junkyard Wars character I did a while back. He uses vermin and undead to take over cities. My players will be adventurers sent to find an eliminate a threat in a city that has suddenly stopped communicating with the outside world. My problem is keeping them contained within the city once they get there, or more specifically, making sure that they don't simply fly away and end the campaign.

The players are level 12, and they are a Swiftblade, a Pyrokineticist (I let him have half manifesting), and a Warlock/Scout.

The ideas I had were:
An invisible web draped over the city, but the pyro could simply burn it away if he found it.
A wall of force, but that may be fairly extreme, and only affects a small area.
A wall of flying insects, but again, the pyro may simply try to burn them away. I could have them just fill in the holes/be unaffected, but that seems fairly contrived.

Here is a rough character sheet for the BBEG:Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19184705&postcount=97)
In short, he has access to 8th level spells from the Death Master list, and virtually anything from the sorcerer list from Vermin Lord.

Does the playground have any ideas I can steal? Plot hooks and enemies are welcome too.

[Selion]

So I'm starting off a horror one-shot based off of a Junkyard Wars character I did a while back. He uses vermin and undead to take over cities. My players will be adventurers sent to find an eliminate a threat in a city that has suddenly stopped communicating with the outside world. My problem is keeping them contained within the city once they get there, or more specifically, making sure that they don't simply fly away and end the campaign.

The players are level 12, and they are a Swiftblade, a Pyrokineticist (I let him have half manifesting), and a Warlock/Scout.

The ideas I had were:
An invisible web draped over the city, but the pyro could simply burn it away if he found it.
A wall of force, but that may be fairly extreme, and only affects a small area.
A wall of flying insects, but again, the pyro may simply try to burn them away. I could have them just fill in the holes/be unaffected, but that seems fairly contrived.

Here is a rough character sheet for the BBEG:Here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=19184705&postcount=97)
In short, he has access to 8th level spells from the Death Master list, and virtually anything from the sorcerer list from Vermin Lord.

Does the playground have any ideas I can steal? Plot hooks and enemies are welcome too.

What about flying monsters with true seeing that patrol the sky?

[Segev]

Give them something that they can't just abandon.

Right now, the mission is "find out what happened to the city," as far as I can gather from the OP. So the moment they see "city covered in vermin, thick enough to make us want to retreat," they're going to conclude there's a supernatural vermin-conjuring force, and return to report. At least, that seems to be your fear.

So give them something to find in the city. Something that, perhaps, is on a clock before they lose it. This should help prevent them from treating it like RPG-time and just retreating to get reinforcements.

I would think a bigger concern, at level 12, than flying away would be teleporting, too. That one's trickier, because "I just hop out to our safe zone, give word of what we're doing and what we need, and hop back with stuff to help" is also a possibility. Now, maybe that's not nearly as big of a deal, since that means they might still be coming BACK to deal with the problem, but it definitely diminishes the horror aspect to have an easy "out."


One possibility is to make it very clear that their mission is to find out not just the problem, but its cause. Maybe even to resolve it, if they can. Now, being horror, you hope to give them the impression they cannot solve it (at least, not with any surety). And your fear remains that they might leave when they realize this, rather than stay and fight on in horror.

As a method to help with this, then, I would suggest making the curse be a combination of things, one of which includes a supernatural pox that causes horrid itching and blisters or pox-marks which erupt in insects and other vermin. The party is cursed/afflicted just from their exploration of the city (give them fortitude saves; some will doubtless fail), and make it clear that, if they "just leave," they now bring the plague with them. Even if they're the most reprehensible evil, they will now know that they can't run from this. They can hide, briefly, but it will now just follow them.

Bonus horror points when they realize that they can't find enough corpses to reflect the population of this ghost town; some may have fled to neighboring cities; if they can't find a way to stop this at the source, it may well spread.

[Jowgen]

Hurricane force winds. Stronghold Builder's Guidebook has some wonderous item that can do that in a shield-type manner for a large area. Alternatively, I think one of the Dragon books had "Lair wards", one of which can also accomplish this.

[Deadasadoor]

Give them something that they can't just abandon.

Right now, the mission is "find out what happened to the city," as far as I can gather from the OP. So the moment they see "city covered in vermin, thick enough to make us want to retreat," they're going to conclude there's a supernatural vermin-conjuring force, and return to report. At least, that seems to be your fear.

So give them something to find in the city. Something that, perhaps, is on a clock before they lose it. This should help prevent them from treating it like RPG-time and just retreating to get reinforcements.

I would think a bigger concern, at level 12, than flying away would be teleporting, too. That one's trickier, because "I just hop out to our safe zone, give word of what we're doing and what we need, and hop back with stuff to help" is also a possibility. Now, maybe that's not nearly as big of a deal, since that means they might still be coming BACK to deal with the problem, but it definitely diminishes the horror aspect to have an easy "out."


One possibility is to make it very clear that their mission is to find out not just the problem, but its cause. Maybe even to resolve it, if they can. Now, being horror, you hope to give them the impression they cannot solve it (at least, not with any surety). And your fear remains that they might leave when they realize this, rather than stay and fight on in horror.

As a method to help with this, then, I would suggest making the curse be a combination of things, one of which includes a supernatural pox that causes horrid itching and blisters or pox-marks which erupt in insects and other vermin. The party is cursed/afflicted just from their exploration of the city (give them fortitude saves; some will doubtless fail), and make it clear that, if they "just leave," they now bring the plague with them. Even if they're the most reprehensible evil, they will now know that they can't run from this. They can hide, briefly, but it will now just follow them.

Bonus horror points when they realize that they can't find enough corpses to reflect the population of this ghost town; some may have fled to neighboring cities; if they can't find a way to stop this at the source, it may well spread.

I really like the curse/ disease idea. Going I should have mentioned that part of the reason that they are there is to at least try and eliminate the threat. The "greater good" of eliminating the threat before they possibly spread it to the rest of the world works wonders. Additionally, the BBEG already has the Necrotic Cyst line, so I could modify that to an infectious version.

Any other ideas are still welcome.

[Segev]

Ah, necrotic cyst. Such a wonderfully evil line of spells. Consider using skulking cysts as a primary low-end enemy in the city, made from so many people who've been slaughtered by that line of spells.

And remember that children have low saves, so make excellent necrotic tumor-controlled delivery systems for necrotic eruption. Which also exposes the targets to a (higher) Fortitude save against gaining a cyst.

Necrotic scrying is also powerful as a villain tool for gathering information.